March 13, 2008

Spend More on Defense but Purchase less Security
Posted by Lorelei Kelly

That seems to be our national strategy these days.

I'm going to start an internet campaign of putting the words
"defense budget" in quotations because -- according to my unscientific
survey out around the country -- Americans are feeling pretty uneasy
about their security and our leadership priorities. In other words,
just whose defense are they talking about? It seems that really only a
handful of people, Members of Congress, the president, commercial
"defense" interests, those who benefit from the military's revolving
door (where defense public servants walk through and, like Cinderella,
end up in a castle in Fairfax County). The following random bits of
information showed up in my in box recently, and they each make me
wonder if there's much difference between a conspiracy theory and
organized, collaborative intent. I don't believe in conspiracy theories
-- but in this case it seems that our leaders are almost intentionally
not paying attention anymore when it comes to real security threats.
Truth be told, our problem is simply that we're stuck in the past --
fighting some phantom USSR and hoping that China explodes another rusty
old weather satellite so we can rationalize our faith in the the really
expensive technology gods to save us. We're
spending upwards of 500 billion this year, more when you add in the war
costs (then the numbers make my head explode Wheeeeeee!) A pittance of
this money is dedicated to funding the direction that our whole ship of
state needs to go (away from the bully principle and toward the
persuasion one) But the skeptic in me thinks that the USA never will
right itself with all the gold-plated barnacles on its hull. We must
engage in a discussion about our nation's security, abandon old
rhetoric and cite specifics. We have a wide open window right now to do
so, while simultaneously championing core military values like public
service and real post-9/11 needs. How might this happen? Here are few
examples of public sector plunder and how to respond to them without
being accused of criticizing the military.

Example One: Bribing Poland to take missile defense.
This boondoggle spectacular formerly known as "Star Wars" is costing
American taxpayers nearly $9 billion dollars this coming year (after
more than a hundred billion spent). Its industry makers have cleverly
internationalized it -- an expansion on the strategy of making sure
that some component of your weapon is made in multiple congressional
districts. So we're telling Poland that we will buff up their military
if they will just please just cooperate and put part of this
non-working jalopy of a weapon on their soil. I went to see missile
defense in Alaska as part of a congressional delegation a few years
back. Words fail me. But farce will do. Let me just say that it was
like going from drinking the Kool Aid to mixing the kool aid, to being
in the kool aid jacuzzi. The trip came with a defense contractor Dr. Strangelove
type.

Acting as our minder, he got mad and then ignored me for much of
the trip because I asked a few questions that I found on the MIT
website. (Actually, I asked the question and he said it was classified,
then I said the part about finding it on the internet. Dr. Strangelove
not happy.) Then he insisted on sitting next to me during the fabulous
Anchorage skyline dinner. This is another post but there were exactly
four of us on the trip whose jaws kept dropping to the floor --
especially after we spent only an hour with the Navy SEALS and a whole
day on a chartered fishing trip (those appalled included the
professional military with us). There's a lesson here: DON'T Confuse
the public servants with the commercial interests. The military is NOT
the defense industry. That means don't say "the military budget needs
to be cut." Say "we need national security reform across the board and
the roles and missions of the military need to be on the table along
with everything else." If you put people ahead of profits, the military
will love you for it.

Example Two: The military budget should automatically be 4% of the GNP.
Legislation has already been introduced in both the House and the
Senate that would make the defense budget an automatic transfer payment
-- thereby negating any attempts to make hard choices in defense
spending. Of all ironies, the uber-conservative Heritage Foundation is
using this argument to reframe the old standby guns-versus-butter
debate. It's Social Security and Medicare versus Defense, according to
their online video course. There is merit to some of this argument. The
budget train wreck is well-documented and is actually going to happen
before it hits the station (uh, like right now). But methinks that the
intention behind this claim is to silence opponents who are worried
that they might be accused of insufficient patriotism when they bring
up new security issues like climate change, counter insurgency and what
the heck are we going to do with 90K more troops? This is a clever
strategy for maintaining the conservative philosophy of defense debate
which can be summed up crudely as "shut up, you traitor": More
precisely, if nobody asks hard questions on this issue, we'll never get
to tax cuts for zillionaires and the fact that conservative philosophy
has even privatized our nation's sacred cow: the U.S. military itself.
Heck, even the Congressional Progressive Caucus substitute budget
recognizes that rebuilding the military is going to be very expensive.
I never thought I'd see the day that their bottom line is $468 billion.
But they are the only ones willing to throw down the gloves on what we
desperately need. Not the usual guns versus butter debate, but the guns
versus guns debate. Our over-deployed National Guard is creating a
dangerous deficit of emergency personnel and their equipment is full of
sand, ruined. We need to talk about why the military has taken on the
lion's share of foreign policy AND defense responsibilities around the
world. We need to learn the strategic lessons of counter insurgency in
Iraq and Afghanistan and apply them to defense spending. We need to ask
ourselves why it was the Army and Wal-Mart who came to the rescue in
New Orleans and not a civilian agency? This all has to do with money.
The military budget might need to be more, it might need to be less --
but making it an automatic transfer payment? Noooooooooo. Lesson: the
military will appreciate any public conversation about the role of the
military in U.S. democracy. It is long overdue and the lack of it is
threatening the institution. Citizen discussions about these issues are
the cornerstone of democracy. Tell anyone who disagrees with you to
read the constitution.

Example Three: The U.S. Air Force is falling apart
Remember a few weeks back when a B2 bomber fell into the ocean off Guam
and sank to the bottom like a 1.2 billion dollar anchor? Now, thank God
the pilots got out safely, but the rejoinder should have been. HOW MUCH
AGAIN? And we would have learned that 1.2 billion is a lowball
estimate. Meanwhile, it's a real problem that the Air Force's old
airplanes are cracking and heaving and endangering our military
personnel. But why isn't the Air Force making some hard choices? Pay
for the good stuff that works -- and quit firing personnel (40K fired
last year). Don't get me wrong. I would stand in line all night to get
a ride in a B2. I love beautiful machines. I have spent untold
paychecks on a 1974 BMW Bavaria and only gave it up when I had a real
baby. But we called the Bavaria "cream puff" for a reason. It was for
looking, not for driving. The B2 is a cream puff. Most important,
though, we can't afford the B2. Not when the majority of threats are
not happening at 30K feet and we have no peer competitor on the
horizon. Yes, it has some great qualities, but it was built to fight
the Soviet Union and it can't be justified in today's scarce budget
climate. I have lots of arguments over this plane with friends. And I
have a great deal of admiration for the Air Force -- they let me take
the Air Command and Staff College -- and I have great hope for it as
the youngest and in many ways the most progressive part of the
military. But we need to get over the collective eight-year-old-boy
admiration of fighter pilots and commandos and get to work on
brainwashing the rest of the world into not fighting us in the first
place. For example, the Air Force's counter insurgency doctrine is
frighteningly immature and grasps at straws. Maybe the Defense
Department should start doing product placement for some of the really
great -- but ugly -- planes...like the A-10 "Warthog." Or a movie about
the superb human rights champions among the Air Force JAG corps (their
lawyers). Lesson: If you're going to criticize the military, remember
to say something good, positive and problem solving about it at the
same time. It is our largest and most admired public service, after
all.

Forty-odd years ago SecDef Robert McNamara introduced PPBS, the planning programming and budgeting system, which tied the military budget to recognizable military programs. Thirty years ago President Carter introduced zero-based budgeting to require all expenditures to be justified by outcomes. And now we are advised that we should make Pentagon spending a corporate entitlement -- that's how badly we have regressed.

At a time when the US is not threatened by any other military, why does the air force need expensive bombers, fighters and re-fuelers? The navy eleven nuclear carrier fleets? The army and marines 90,000 more troops? Nobody knows. Nobody says. Even the sainted Obama says (1) we need to pull out of Iraq but (2) we need more troops. And nobody ever asks him why the US needs more troops -- what does he have in mind? Nobody knows, nor cares.

The two major drivers of this wasteful policy are every congess-critter's need to sustain incoming spending to her/his district, and the endless "war on terror." Neither of these makes sense nor can they be justified, but they are untouchable. The US should get off the narcotic of military spending and, if the goal is just to spend money, spend it on something useful. In the next town to me there is a spanking new state-of-the-art border patrol complex (a domestic sign of the "GWOT"), and further on down you can see school-kids on recess from their "temporary" windowless boxes. Spend money on kids, not war. The "war on terror," ridiculed even by General Pace, Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush, while meaningless serves as a blank check and an empty justification for all sorts of wasteful spending as well as unrestricted executive privilege.

Meanwhile the US military -- a so-called "public service," isn't that cute -- has 700 bases in 130 countries, is fighting at least three wars (that we know about) with off-budget supplemental spending while the world hates us and terrorist recruiting is a growth industry. Some "public service." Dead Iraqis and Afghanis, if they could speak, might differ on that concept. Live ex-soldiers treated as trash can and do speak to this, and their admiration for the way they have been treated by a callous government is often lacking.

The current administration is still fighting the Cold War with this deployment of missile batteries in eastern Europe which is infuriating Russia, but also alienating European allies such as Germany, whose help we need in Afghanastan. Also a CBS newstory on Wednsday symbolizes the misallocation of defense spending when it describes the poor shape of the AC-130 gunships that are breaking down through constant use. Instead the Defense Department is wasting money on a useless missile defense system, while not replacing or revamping the weapons that the we need in the current wars such as the AC-130.

Yesterday, my boyfriend gave me a lot of FFXI Giland he told me that the FFXI gold is useful for me to go into the net game. At the same time, the Final Fantasy XI gold is the gift for my birthday and I will buy FFXI Gil to thank him because it is not free for him.

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